Lost in Suburbia: I know an old coffee that lived in a shoe

My husband also has an endearing name for me. He calls me “Two Sips.” This comes from my tendency to make myself a cup of coffee, take two sips, and then absentmindedly leave the cup somewhere in the house.

“Hey Two Sips,” he would say, entering the kitchen with an armful of old coffee mugs. “I collected your stash.”

I would glower at him, snatch the cups, and then surreptitiously check to see if any of them were still drinkable.

“You know,” I replied one day, dumping the new collection of cups in the sink. “For every half-filled cup of coffee I leave around the house, you match me in shoes.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “By the way, have you seen my boots?”

“They’re in the dining room,” I sighed.

The next morning was a repeat of the first.

“Hey Two Sips, here are your coffee cups,” he said handing me a stack. “Have you seen my black sneakers?”

“They’re in the office.”

“And my brown shoes?” he asked. “In the family room.”

Things went along like this for a while. My cups were on top of tables and next to couches. His shoes were under tables and next to chairs. He collected my cups and dumped them in the sink. I collected his shoes and dumped them in the closet. It was the perfect co-dependant, co-slob relationship. Then one day, our worlds collided. In one of my momentary fits of cleanliness, I walked around the house and collected all of my unfinished coffee cups myself. But as I headed back to the kitchen, the dog got under my feet and I went sprawling, hurling cold coffee across the floor. Unfortunately, one of my husband’s lost pair of shoes was tucked under the dining room table, and as the coffee went flying, it made a direct hit with my husband’s shoes — on his shoes, and, sadly, in his shoes. They were in fact, no longer shoes. They were shoe-shaped coffee urns.

While the dog took care of cleaning up most of the mess, I rescued my husband’s shoes and tried to figure out how to get them de-coffeefied. I toweled off the coffee, blotted up the liquid inside the shoe, and then shined them up with a buffing cloth. Then I blow dried the inside of his shoes until they were dry and even somewhat fluffy. As I stood back and admired my work, I thought that they actually looked better than before and my husband probably wouldn’t even notice that the shoes had been harmed in any way.

Especially if I didn’t tell him where they were.

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